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"No, not many at all. Only 12% of our customers have auto hop, and of those, half don't know how to use it, a quarter don't like it, and many want to watch prime time that night, so we're down to about 98,000 viewers who are affected."

Skipping commercials was better when it was "behind the scenes" and you might not use the skip button... or you might leave the room but you might not. With AutoHop, and one button press you don't have to see any commercials and don't have to actively engage yourself to skip them... and that will become something measurable that companies will use to stop paying for advertising at some point.

I wonder how this affects some other ends of the spectrum.

For instance I have a partnered youtube account through a gaming network where I take a 60/40 cut in my favor of ad earnings but have extra options for gearing my ads closer to my viewer demographics tastes.

I wonder if when the AH starts to get more widespread (you just know the other companies were just waiting to see the ruling on these cases) will the ads start to pay more to the youtube market..

Broadcasters are not fighting the consumer to prevent him from skipping commercials. They are fighting the corporation that is skipping the commercials for the consumer.

(Maybe it's like driving down the freeway and not looking at the billboards, versus somebody planting trees in front of the billboards, to block the view of them. It devalues the advertising revenue of the sign company, and makes them have to put up a bigger/higher sign.)

I see a day in which there are commercial overlays on the TV shows to ensure we see them, as more people skip commercials. It is already infuriating to me to be watching a TV show and have Matthew Perry or someone walking across the bottom of the screen, winking as a banner advertising his TV show scrolls across the screen. In the middle of another show. It's a small step from that to Depends ads doing the same thing.

And then I will long for the days of regular commercials and nothing on the screen as I watch a show.

Broadcasters are not fighting the consumer to prevent him from skipping commercials. They are fighting the corporation that is skipping the commercials for the consumer.

Semantics, but the broadcasters are fighting against consumers having the option to skip commercials. Every time one plays an AutoHOP enabled recording the default is not to automatically skip commercials ... it is the consumer's choice to use the feature.

The problem that given a choice viewers WILL skip commercials isn't the fault of DISH ... it is the fault of the broadcasters for taking away so much of the hour that people are weary of seeing them. Viewers have worn out their skip forward buttons. DISH is just providing the service consumers want with less wear and tear on the remote.

(Maybe it's like driving down the freeway and not looking at the billboards, versus somebody planting trees in front of the billboards, to block the view of them. It devalues the advertising revenue of the sign company, and makes them have to put up a bigger/higher sign.)

I read it as DISH verifying that AutoHOP is working correctly by looking at stored copies of Fox programming. It sounds like something that should be allowed in a contract (recording for quality assurance purposes) but perhaps it was not spelled out. (And the reference is to a contract between DISH and Fox, not Federal law, so it is a guess as to what the contract actually allows.)

Limiting the commercials will just mean that the quality of the programming (and the mechanisms for transmitting it) will suffer.
Programming costs money, equipment costs money, and talented people cost money.

Unless you're the BBC (with license fees), you can't make quality without advertising revenue and retrans fees. And, even the BBC is now talking about running ads, to make up for some of their massive budget cuts.

It seems like a lot of TV is turning to crap anyways ... I suppose that is a good thing about increased commercial load. Less crap between commercials.

If you increase the quality of the programming and reduce the commercial load I'll watch the commercials. But at the current level of commercials there is no way. It is already bad enough that the shows are hard to follow due to the breaks. If I had to watch commercials I'd wouldn't watch the shows.

Hopper or not ... I'm going to avoid commercials. It is inevitable. And I am not alone.

Quality of programming. Interesting subject. Quality is quite low. Most channels run movies from many years ago. Plus they run them over and over and over. Quality is at its lowest. We pay for tons of commercials and old programming we've seen a dozen times. I read an article a couple of months ago that cable will be at $200 a month by the year 2020. Satellites not far behind. i believe this as we are heading their already. I don't have every channel and am already at $130. I used to pay $50 for dish. Granted I didn't have a dvr at the time, but, don't feel that it's worth $80 a month. Plus more commercials and reruns.

Good question. I do pay a big price to not watch it. I primarily watch hgtv, DIY, and our locals. Also, some hbo. My wife only watches encore westerns. she likes old stuff. Truthfully, it is too expensive.

When I was growing up, it was 6 minutes of commercials per hour. Now it's almost 20.

I can count the number of 'live' (non-sports) programs that I've watched in the past year on one hand. When my wife and I were watching a show live, she commented on how jarring it was to be FORCED to watch commercials, as opposed to seeing one flip by and MAYBE being interested enough to go back and watch it.

I've watched MAYBE two or three sports programs live and I end up putting them on pause and going to do something else, then returning when I can skip the 'dead time'.

When I was growing up, it was 6 minutes of commercials per hour. Now it's almost 20.

That is one of reasons it was called the "Golden Age of Television." Television was B&W, and screens were small, but the programs were not fragmented like they are now. Even many of the commercials were entertaining.

That is one of reasons it was called the "Golden Age of Television." Television was B&W, and screens were small, but the programs were not fragmented like they are now. Even many of the commercials were entertaining.

It was golden because it was live, it was novel, and all commercials were "new".

You could barely see the football, much less a tennis ball or hockey puck.

And, yes, there was much to be like about TV in the 50's, but I think there's much to be liked today. Esp. with a good DVR.....

Hopper or not ... I'm going to avoid commercials. It is inevitable. And I am not alone.

You certainly aren't alone. I also have a use for the standard 30 second skip.If I want to watch a football game that isn't important enough for me to watch live, I record it and use the 30 second skip at the end of each play which brings me to the start of the next play. Almost perfect. I can watch a game in one hour instead of the 3 1/2 hours live.

I also installed a HDHOMERUN (thanks to your suggestion JL) and have another way to record and watch events on my PCs.

My next step, now that the OTA dongle for the H/J systems has arrived, I can get serious about getting upgraded from my VIPs. Cabling nightmares ahead untangling the mess I have now.

Brian...reporting from the left coast 2 Hoppers,1 Joey, 1 VIP211K active receivers
I still believe in magic !

Television viewing without a DVR has become an almost intolerable exercise. The continuity is so jarring with the long, frequent commercial breaks. Not to mention that roughly one third of the viewing time is not even the program itself. It almost feels like theft of my time and attention.

I don't watch much sports, but even then, I prefer to get well behind live TV and zip through downtime and commercials and catch up before the game ends. A football game is one hour on the game clock, yet its broadcast regularly exceeds three, though obviously part of that is the nature of the game with normal clock stoppages. Grandude is quite right about the convenience of 30-sec. skip being almost perfect between plays.

Someday, the lawyers and networks and providers will all conspire to disable our precious fast forward buttons. I've been a DVR user since 2003, and it'll be like having my eyeballs propped open in Clockwork Orange. Please pass the eye drops.